Conduct
by dramatorama
Summary: "Take time to think things through before starting a relationship."


She used to do my homework for me, and that's how this thing started: she was thirteen and I was fifteen and I should have been able to write my own damned essays. She was so smart and sweet and kind, that girl, when she still thought I was the best thing alive.

When she asked if I'd take her to the training centre as soon as she came of age I thought nothing of it; I'd be her protector, I'd make sure nothing touched her. She sat so calm and polite while those bugs damned near ate me up, when all I cared about was that she enjoyed her birthday. No one else had remembered, she told me. After we were done I'd bought a cake from the cafeteria and stuck in fourteen tiny candles. The flames made her glasses flicker and glow like fireflies when she blew them out.

* * *

She asked me if I'd take her there again a year later, and by then something had already begun in me. I knew it wasn't right, and I could hardly bear to look at her when all I got back was adoration. She had her cadet's uniform by then, but we knew it wouldn't be too long before she outgrew it; both ways it was true. Legs too long for that skirt and six weeks till war season. She was killing time with me, and I was grateful. We made a game of it; we'd stand still and quiet, I'd be ready to shoot and she'd stand at my back to steady my arms.

* * *

We graduated together, and she saved my life on the way. Stepped too far out of range while watching the perimeter, and who's there but Trepe on the way to rendezvous, last survivor from her team as far as I know, face all brown with blood, with just enough time along the way to gut punch the nutjob who was aiming his rifle right at me. I shot him in the head and we got the fuck out of there.

While the rest of us got our rank reports she was puking up outside. Like I said, sweet girl.

* * *

The year after that, I didn't see her much. She was sent to Galbadia for most of it, then Trabia, catching all the guardian forces they could root out, because who _wouldn't_ want some creature hanging out in your brain? There's a reason they say "Normal for Balamb."

Soon as _I_ got my uniform they had me in recruitment, then finance training with that bastard NORG, then psy-ops. After that they promoted me; I guess even that sly fuck Kramer (bless his soul) knows that sometimes when you have an ass in front of you, you'd better have a boot ready.

Then summer rolls around and suddenly there she is at the door. Arms crossed with a sly smile, and those lips, _shit._ Tapping her foot, and an eyebrow raised with humour in it, like it's her who's been waiting for me all along.

Well, what could I do but invite her in?

* * *

I have her on the bed, only it's really she who has me, getting one knee between my legs and tossing me right around so now _she_ is grinning down into _my _face and I have my teeth clenched and turn my head away because this moment that has filled my guilt-dreams is too much. The words hiss out between my teeth _please, please, _and suddenly she's soft again, heavy and close, the murmur so small I have to squeeze my eyes shut to make sense of it _this? _she says, and her tongue is on my pulse, _this? _Hands moving so slow and so hot down my sides that I can't think of anything to say but yes.

* * *

When I said what I said, I had my head buried in the soft part of her where collarbone ends and breast begins, all as gentle and innocent as any holy child of Zebalga sleeping on his mama. I had my eyes closed and I could feel her breath on my cheek slowing towards sleep when she said, "I wish we could stay like this..." and dammit, that woke me up because, sure as shit, we had reveille at six and it was quarter past five.

"Let's." I said and in that moment between my mouth closing and hers opening I _knew, _I _knew _what she'd say, she wanted to but she had Important Things To Do.

But she didn't say anything, and something in me broke a little.

I had myself on her in that way when you don't know you're doing it, but your body does – when you hook a leg over theirs, tangle your arms in theirs _just _so – the way things seem to go when one of you is going to leave, and the other can't help but get in the way. My arm around her waist just then seemed to be the only thing keeping her from drifting right out and leaving me; that's how not-there she was. I listened closer to make sure her heart was beating, and there it was, that treacherous little bastard going _not you, not you, not you. _

She qualified as a field medic when she was fourteen. Did her training let her listen to what I was hearing now? Did she hear the cadets' secret fears and dreams through the cold ear of a stethoscope? She's a romantic, but maybe that's something she never tried.

She pushed me out of my own bed with one hand. Damn junctions. Dressed with one eye on the clock and kissed me quick, distracted, behind the ear. Exam today, but maybe I could get some rest while she got her last student caught up for it? I crawled back into bed because today was already too much. She made up a lie for me so I could lie there until the lazy afternoon, greedy with the memory of her.

* * *

A week or so later, I'm dealing with all the goddamn fallout that sociopath Almasy left behind. She's on another continent doing hyne knows what, and I'm looking for a memo I swear I wrote about not training the unhinged, when I find her bra in the half-inch between my bed and the wall. I have to stop a minute, press it to my chest and breathe in the perfume. There's no way in hell twenty-eight inches of _that_ is going around thirty-two inches of _me_, but I keep it anyway, because it is hers.

* * *

_There's more of this story, if anyone would like to read it. Let me know. I am, however, aware that I really, really need a beta. _

_Since it's probably confusing and I need to stop fucking around with tense switching, the second-to-last section is set on the day the game begins; the previous section is set about 2 years earlier, and the rest should be self explanatory. _


End file.
